


The Trench and The Sea

by smolhombre



Series: Crackship Armadas [2]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV), Marvel
Genre: 2020 Needs Some Goddamn Levity, Banter, But Only in His Crab Form, Courtship, Crack Treated Seriously, Cultural Differences, Does this Qualify as a Sugar Daddy Fic?, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Flawed Characters Trying Their Best, Fluff and Humor, Friendship Makes the World Go Round, Gratuitous Moana References, I Have Now Made Thirst for Jemaine Clement Canon, Light-Hearted, Trish and Karen as the Underutilized Chaos Twins of the MCU, Wingman-ing, i wonder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:47:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 19,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27094540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smolhombre/pseuds/smolhombre
Summary: 'Cool girl,' she tells herself. 'You are a cool girl with real, actual self-esteem and you know that when the King of Atlantis texts you it sounds like Jemaine Clement pretending to be a giant cloisoneé crab.'Or:Trish hates the beach, cannot swim, and questions many of her life choices.
Relationships: Background Karen Page/Victor Von Doom, Karen Page & Patricia Walker, Namor the Sub-Mariner/Patricia Walker
Series: Crackship Armadas [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/740451
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

Trish hated the beach. She hated the seemingly endless ocean, she hated the grate of the tide, the grit of the sand, the blaze of the sun overhead pasting her collar to the back of her neck with sweat.

Jessica had been right, but the thought of admitting that even to herself is a fresh misery on top of everything else. 

Grinding her teeth, Trish pushes her sunglasses up the sweaty bridge of her nose for perhaps the fiftieth time before pulling her phone out, just for something to fiddle with as she waits. And she does wait, and she keeps waiting, and when forty minutes have passed, she nearly throws it into the water and forfeits her most recent Toon Blast win. 

_Could nothing be easy?_

Lip curled back over her teeth, Trish finally relents to pulling up her text messages.

“ _Not able to wait any more,_ ” she taps out, slow as she can, each second hoping to be proved wrong. “ _Text me when you are able to meet again. I still want to talk. Day or night._ "

Journalism has been nothing but a blight on her life since she decided to trade her mother’s costumes for the station’s. She won’t be able to face Jessica until at least the weekend, and her producer until at least tomorrow morning. They had told her, after all.

_What a wasted day_.

“Beautiful women shouldn’t look so dour.”

Trish doesn’t even look up from her phone, half-heartedly checking her emails still hoping for news on this lead. “So don’t give them reason to.”

A shadow stretches over the bench she’d been perched on for the better part of the morning, and Trish’s knuckles bleach white as she grips her phone tighter. There’s a prickle on her neck that tells her to run, but she refuses. She’s been wrong before. The last thing she needs is some picture on Twitter tonight proclaiming to some effect: “PATSY WALKER LOSES HER SHIT...AGAIN.”

“Someone else has beaten me to it, I believe.” The man’s voice is deep, but his accent is odd. Trish can’t place it — the syllables are silky smooth meeting each other, the hard edges all rounded off, the pace oddly even and rhythmic. She feels her brow knit together, but she refuses, still, to look up. 

“And that gives you a free pass?”

The man thinks that’s quite funny. She feels him maybe three feet from her back. On the seabreeze, she smells salt and something green. “I believe you are the one operating under a free pass, my lady.”

A morning of wasting her time in a place she hates on a lead she knew, in her heart of hearts, led to nowhere, only to be condescended to by some random douchebag has worn her thin. 

She makes a show of leaning over the side of the bench, then the front. “I don’t see a coin slot. This is free parking, to my knowledge.”

The shadow moves. Trish forces herself not to flinch. Some of them were like that — if you moved, took a step back, showed weakness — they would take it as encouragement. It would make things worse.

“What an interesting, literal creature you are.”

“Oh, fuck you,” she finally snaps, looking up to find a tall, dark-haired man studying her. Backlit by the sun, the particulars of his face blur to vagueness. 

“Even I usually have to try a _little_ harder, I admit.”

Trish’s hand twitches, palm tingling. She doesn’t hit anyone in anger. She promised herself that much. In defense of herself, of someone else, but not out of her temper. She was not her mother. No amount of bad days could make Trish her mother. She has told herself that enough times she sees it behind her eyelids sometimes, and that makes it true enough.

But she really, truly thinks about it.

Roughly hooking her purse over her shoulder, Trish rises to her feet. She doesn’t have to listen to every asshole who crosses her path. 

“Wait.”

She steps around him when he reaches for her hand. If she hit him now, she reasons, she would be justified. She would be following her own rules. 

“Don’t touch me,” Trish warns him, one final chance to not be a complete asshole. One final chance to not be her mother.

“I’m no scoundrel.” The man scoffs, having the gall to sound actually offended. “I am not some common brute. You insult my honor.”

“Fuck your honor. Leave me _alone_.” Trish is unwilling to have her back to him, storming around instead with the widest berth possible. 

Several things happen all at once, however, when she makes it perhaps four steps into her march towards dignity. 

The noise of the tide cuts out all at once, like a pulled plug, like the odd suck of a vacuum. The dizzying space is filled immediately by the far off screams of beach-goers closer to the pier. 

In the space between blinks, Trish comes face-to-face with a wall of nearly opaque sea-water. Sea spray mists her cheeks, her skin feeling tight from the salt.

_What the fuck?_

“A man’s honor is all he really has.” 

Trish gets a good look at the man now, standing between her and an idly floating jellyfish she can see in the _wall of the fucking ocean now surrounding them_. Angular, almost cruelly cut cheekbones are echoed by a highly arched brow, set imperiously above his sharp, dark eyes.

Who the _fuck_?

“Is that what you believe?” Trish’s pulse thrums fast under her skin set suddenly too tight on her body. She had fought side-by-side with Jessica and lived. She had faced bad people and people stronger than she could ever be, and been the one to walk away. She doesn’t need anyone to protect her or save her anymore. Trish can do it herself. “Can I quote you on it?”

It seems to fly clear over his head. “I should hope you will be able to learn from your error, so yes, in the future quote me as you like.”

A muscle under her eye twitches. 

“And do you believe you are acting honorably now?”

His liquid dark eyes narrow to slits. “What are you implying?”

“You are holding a woman against her will, aren’t you? You harassed me on the bench thinking you could get away with it.”

“I would argue I am getting away with it.”

Knee-jerk indignation flares in her belly. _Bastard._ The _worst_ kind of bastard.

He hasn’t made any move to touch her, to come closer. Trish...doesn’t feel like she is about to die. She has become pretty good at recognizing that for what it is, usually. 

“What was your name again?” She tries to lean her weight back on her heels, looking relaxed and tilting her chin up, arms crossed over her chest. Her lead on the Brennan story is going nowhere — but that doesn’t mean she won’t have _something_ by her producer’s deadline. This is looking like an exclusive no one else is gonna have, if nothing else.

“Your memories are short.” The man rolls his eyes. “Shorter than I remember. I haven’t been gone so long to have to reintroduce myself.”

“And yet,” Trish says drily. 

“Ah, suddenly you’re in a reasonable humor. Tell me, then, who do you think has the capability to raise the sea?”

“Poseidon? Neptune? Are you a new X-Men or something?”

“My name,” he begins slowly, lip curling back over his teeth, “is Namor. I do not answer to any man or mutant.”

Trish squints at him. Did that niggle her memory somewhere? “Everyone answers to someone.”

“King Namor,” he continues, raising his voice slightly, “answers only to himself.”

“Does he speak in third person often?”

At this, Namor does take a step forward, his first move towards her so far. Trish notices how oddly he’s dressed now — a dark, almost old-fashioned tunic with loose linen pants and barefoot, as if he doesn’t live in fear of broken glass or tetanus — and frowns. Something is wrong with his ankles, though he speaks before she’s able to figure out what.

“When the mood strikes. To whom does he currently converse?”

“Better question,” she adjusts the strap of her bag over her shoulder, “King of what, exactly?”. 

“What do you think, woman?”

“My name isn’t _woman._ ”

“I wouldn’t know.”

The muted roar of the current around them muffles the worst of the pandemonium outside on the shore, but Trish thinks she can make out sirens somewhere.

Distantly, she thinks of what a psychiatrist would have to say about her reaction to her current situation.

“What is a fire truck going to do?” She sighs, mostly to herself. 

“Humans don’t always make logical choices.” A brief, pointed pause. “They wait sometimes for hours on a beach for something that is not coming.”

“Tell me what else you know, O King,” Trish shoots back hotly.”Do you not have _kingly_ duties to attend that prevent you from _being a goddamn creep_?”

The wall of water seems to press them closer. 

“Your name, infernal woman, and I will release you.”

A headache is pinching between her eyes. There is a churning kind of impotent frustration in her gut — Trish doesn’t feel in immediate danger, perhaps, but she feels _helpless_ , knowing she is stuck at someone else’s whim. It is the precise feeling that precedes the urge to not be sober. She can’t risk it.

“Patsy,” she grinds out. It _burns._ “My name is Patsy.”

Namor studies her, considering, before nodding once, as if a matter was settled. Without another word, he walks past her, nearly close enough to touch. He smells of something green and crisp as the wall of water swallows him up. 

For a minute, Trish is left begrudgingly marvelling at the sunlight shining through the sea as it arcs back into the cradle of the shore, thousands of little facets like jewelry. The moment is brief, however, as the last trailing, frothy wave crashes on top of her, leaving her shrieking, sputtering, and seeing _red_.

* * *

There is no point in denying her vanity. Her therapist said this was a natural side effect of growing up the way she did, and it wasn’t necessarily a character flaw — but they were paid to say things like that. 

For whatever the reason, Trish feels as if she has permission from the professionals to mourn her Armani blouse, which was $975, brand new, and almost certainly ruined. No dry cleaner on the eastern seaboard could repair the salt-water damage on its creamy silk. It was peppered on the collar with some of her makeup that had washed off of her face under the deluge as insult to injury, and her contacts burn terribly as she stumbles back to her car, regretting the _idiot_ thought she had that anything good could come from a trip to Long Island. 

As soon as she fumbles the handle open, Trish flings herself into the driver’s seat and all but claws her lenses out, flinging them to where they aren’t her problem anymore. She has to dig around her console for her glasses, which of course is when her phone starts ringing.

For a minute, she wonders why the phone couldn’t have taken the brunt of the tide instead of her beautiful, innocent, blameless shirt. 

“ _What_ ,” she snaps, not even looking at the ID. Anyone who called her on her personal cell had already seen her at her worst and wouldn’t be offended by her non-public personality.

“Ah. You’ve had a bad day. Good, good.” Karen blows a raspberry on the other end of the line. “I shouldn’t have to do too much convincing then.”

Trish’s hair is stiff from the water like she’d run it through with glue. When she checks in the rearview, she finds flecks of mascara on her cheeks, her eyeliner smudged around her clumped-together eyelashes. Her mouth feels chapped raw and dry from all the salt.

“I need a drink.”

“Join the club,” Trish says darkly. She flicks the mirror up with more force than required. 

“I would offer you my place,” Karen sighs, “but it is currently inaccessible by way of recent vigilante abuse.”

“I can’t go out looking like this. I know it’s a drive, but I can pick you up if you want to swing by mine.”

“Oh thank god.” Her end of the line goes crackly and muffled for a minute, like the phone was being jostled. “I was already headed over.”

Karen was probably one of the few people she could trust this morning with who wouldn’t judge her or tell her “I told you so,” because if Karen was in her shoes, Trish thinks they would have done the same thing. If anything, Karen would have probably hit Namor long before he was able to trap her in his stupid little fishbowl.

Maybe she tells Karen she will see her in a minute, but maybe she ends the call before she remembers. She spends the entire hour long drive back to Tribeca seething, working herself up into a fouler mood each second until her parking garage finally greets her.

Karen waits for Trish on the floor in front of her door, legs splayed out in front of her, dried blood crusting her temple and the swell of her cheekbone.

“You like Korean food?” She greets her, roughly unlocking the door as Karen rises to her feet. “I ordered Jungsik for me and Jess last night, but she bailed on me last minute. I have tons leftover in my fridge.”

“Is that tons in rich people portions or normal people sized?”

She and Karen both shuck their shoes off in her foyer and stumble into the kitchen. Karen collapses to a seat at the bar while Trish dives immediately into her fridge. 

“Let’s see how we feel after we finish the spareribs. I’ve wanted to try that Israeli place on Chambers Street anyway if we are still hungry.”

Nodding, Karen eagerly digs into the styrofoam container and pulls out a sticky sparerib, eating it cold. Trish leans her elbows on the other side of the counter and follows suit. Only halfway through the takeout does she remember to dig in the fridge for something to wash it down with. She swore to never drink because she had a bad day, never to balm her nerves, never again thinking it would fix anything — but she digs a beer out for Karen and a can of ginger ale for herself. 

“Who hit you?”

Grunting, Karen takes a long swig from the bottle. Now that Trish looks at her, she thinks there’s a bit of plaster caught in her hair. “I was working on a story about the Russians — the dock on Roosevelt Island, what they’re selling, all of it. One of them...one of them must have followed me to the office.”

“Is this one of those ‘you should see the other guy’ moments?”

“I wish,” she snorts. “He...he came in, but. As soon as he got into my office, someone else joined him. He barely got to slam me into the wall and do the whole ‘you messed with the wrong gang,’ spiel before...before they came.”

“Another Russian?” Trish prompts, when Karen doesn’t continue, seemingly lost in thought as she studies the marble countertop. 

“No. I — I’ve been researching this for _months_ , you know. I’d been working with a professor at NYU to help me translate some stuff, and...and I don’t speak Russian, but I can recognize it. This man wasn’t speaking Russian.”

“Who the hell?” Trish frowns, opening the next box now that the ribs have been polished off. Heaps of rice greet them, topped by wafer thin slices of octopus and squidy, marigold slivers of sea urchin. “Another gang? Who else is left on the island now?”

“I wish I knew. I asked IT to get me stills of the security footage so I can get a better look. They both went soaring out my goddamn window before I could even get a good damn look under the hood.”

“Out your _window_? How are they not dead from that fall?”

Karen chews on her bottom lip for a minute before taking a sea urchin into her mouth. “They didn’t fall. Not. Not really. I watched him. He landed on his feet like nothing, he walked away with the other man on his shoulder like…” she looks up at Trish apologetically here, and Trish thinks she knows what’s coming. “Like Jessica could have done.”

“...When you have the pictures ready, I’ll look at them. If I find anything, maybe...maybe I can convince Jess to see if she recognizes them.”

“You’re a lady and a scholar.” She leans back in her seat, the late afternoon sun from the windows behind her lighting up her hair to a rich kind of amber. “Now. What the _fuck_ happened to you?”

Trish groans. “That Brennan story I mentioned last week?”

“Embezzlement something or other.”

“Right. No mutants, no superheroes, nothing inhuman at all, like I promised them. I was meeting the whistleblower out towards Oyster Bay, but he stood me up. He’d been acting cagey the past few days, but I thought I’d convinced him…” she trails off briefly here, reminded of the still-tender bruise to her ego. If she were better at her job, this wouldn’t have happened. Jessica could get anyone to talk. Karen made a career out of it. But not her. 

She clears her throat. “Anyway. This asshole on the beach — I thought he was just hitting on me. But he...I think he’s a mutant, or something. He pulled the sea up from the beach. I don’t know how else to say it. He could control the ocean, and he dumped some of it on me, because he is a _dickhead._ ”

Karen, for a long minute, only gapes at her, slightly open mouthed and not speaking.

“Trish,” she finally offers delicately, “you could have led with this.”

“He was mostly just an asshole. You had a _substantive_ encounter,” Trish points out reasonably. “He was just trying to intimidate me, or whatever.” 

Karen doesn’t answer, digging in her purse before pulling her phone out. “Oyster Bay, you said?”

Before Trish can respond, Karen hands her the phone. #OysterBay is trending on Twitter, and there is a whole gallery of pictures from every angle — well, she thinks distantly, every angle but _one_ — that she is forced to marvel over, just a little.

The shoreline has moved up nearly to the access road where Trish knows a row of benches are. One large swathe of the tide has wrapped around itself — in some of the photos it looks like the bird’s eye meteorologist view of a hurricane. In one video, Trish sees the water push back like a tsunami before swelling forward, in another she watches it settle back into place. She doesn’t see herself or Namor in any of them, which is probably for the best.

“Huh.” 

Karen reaches for her phone, muttering to herself. “I have a list of the mutants we know about, hang on — did you get a name?”

“Namor,” Trish frowns. “Hey. Don’t — don’t tell Jess about this. Please. She’s still twitchy about...me. My ‘proximity to superhumans and how it affects my decision making process,’ or some shit.”

Karen doesn’t answer immediately, engrossed in her phone. Trish tucks back into the leftovers, feeling off-balance. 

It had been a very odd day. Before heading out, Karen promises to look into Namor even though Trish does not remember asking her to. 

“You can stay,” Trish reminds her. “He found you at the office, are you sure it’s safe to go home?”

“It will be fine. I have a...uh. A _vigilant_...neighbor.”

Trish lets that go without much pressing. If it was a vigilante they had in common, Karen would have just said so, and frankly they both deserved _some_ secrets. In passing

She spares another thought as to how a psychiatrist would respond to that kind of attitude before determining it does not, in this minute, matter.

After setting the security system and chucking the remains from their dinner into the garbage, Trish can stand her ruined clothes and salty, sticky hair no longer. She peels off her blouse as the pistachio and fig smell of her bath oil fills the bathroom, and when the frothy, gauzy bubbles are near spilling over the tub, it’s all Trish can do to not dive into it headfirst. 

Pulling out her Kindle, she settles into the tub, inching down to turn the faucet off with her foot. Before she gets close, though, the tap cuts off all at once, and her pipes give an odd, protesting gurgle.

_You better fucking not_.

She will not have a plumbing emergency today. She _won’t_.

Something _plops_ out of the faucet and into the bubbly cover of the water as she sits up for a closer look, and the water turns back on immediately after.

Shooting up to her feet, Trish scrambles out of the tub, slipping on the tile of her floor as she tries to keep upright. 

_What the fuck?_

After a few seconds of fishing around, she finds it — a pearl, an opalescent, almost mint green pearl the size of a very large grape, perfectly round and weighty in her hand.

The back of her neck prickles. 

Very slowly, she sinks back into the water. She holds the pearl in the cup of her palm, studying it until the bubbles are all gone and the bath is cold.


	2. Chapter 2

“Objectively,” Trish reasons around the mouthful of bagel she was currently working her way through, “if you found, say, a big emerald in the street. Or a big — some jewelry. You wouldn’t just _keep_ it.”

“Of course I absolutely fucking would,” Jess snaps. Over the phone, Trish can hear the far off _click_ of her camera. “What’s gotten into you? Some one-percenter leaving Cartier in the streets of Tribeca or something?”

Oyster Bay is approaching faster than it seemed to the day before. She briefly guides the steering wheel with her knee as she reaches for her coffee, taking a sip as the horizon in front of her stretches wider, bluer. 

“New question, then.” She settles the coffee back in the cupholder and takes the final bite of her bagel. “If someone tried to just _give_ you jewelry —”

“Do you have a stalker?” Jess asks sharply.

“I don’t,” Trish says, though she is not sure. “Oh, look. I’m heading into the office now, gotta go.”

“Trish —”

But she ends the call before she can hear out the end of Jessica’s warning. 

Really, what _else_ was she supposed to do with the damned thing?

She’d come early enough in the morning that the beach is almost entirely empty. The pinky lilac of dawn is still heady in the sky, and if this is all a fool’s errand, no one is there to see it but her.

Bypassing the bench she’d sat on the day before, Trish slides her sandals off and marches straight to the shoreline until the cool water laps her toes.

She stands there for a minute, hands on her hips. 

Nothing is happening, so she fishes the pearl out from her jeans pocket and holds it aloft between her two fingers, squinting at it like an oracle against the budding sun.

Nothing happens then, either.

Trish clears her throat.

She waits another painfully long minute before committing herself. If it doesn’t work, no one is here to witness the failure and she won’t have to do it again.

“Namor.”

Holding her breath, she listens for any change in the tide. Nothing. Alright then.

Fine. That was for the best anyway.

The pearl _is_ beautiful. She’d never seen one this color, even in the synthetic ones her mother used to wear before the Patsy checks became consistent enough to pay for more than just the bills. At this size…it was something that would maybe even make the news. And she _could_ use a news story, but then how would she explain coming across it?

Trish could hardly sell it, either. That wouldn’t be right. She doesn’t need the payout, and more importantly she only accepts the money she’s earned, now. Money she has worked for on her terms. 

Someone on this beach may be having a very good day come a few hours from now. She rolls her jeans up to her knees and strides into the water as far as she can before chucking the pearl back into the ocean.

* * *

In her office, Trish is glad to receive the e-mail from Karen. She had been very close to pulling up a browser tab to search for “Namor,” which would be a ridiculous waste of time, considering she has actual work to do. If she was going to put it off, at least she could procrastinate with something worth her time.

She’d made copies of Kozlov’s records and everything her mother ever turned over about Jessica, though as she compares the CCTV stills, none seem to be similar to the pictures attached to her files. 

But what she does find in the last picture still gives her pause. Halfway out of frame and on the back of their dark hoodie, Trish finds a sigil. She magnifies the image thirty times before it becomes even a little familiar.

Trish dials Karen’s number as she starts typing on her keyboard with her free hand.

“Trish?”

“You said they weren’t speaking Russian?” She greets her, scrolling through the images now on her screen.

“That’s right. Were you able to recognize them?”

“Not from Kozlov’s records. But that last clip you sent — the corner, you can see they have an emblem on their shirt. It looks like...Karen, I don’t know what you found on the docks, but it looks like the Latverian crest.”

Karen is silent for a long minute over the phone, but Trish doesn’t begrudge her. She is trying to piece the puzzle together, herself.

“What the _hell_ does Victor von Doom want with Russian opiates in Hell’s Kitchen?”

“That is the question,” Trish mutters, brow furrowed. She cradles the phone between her ear and shoulder as she types something else in the search bar. “Look...I don’t know if it’s more trouble than it’s worth, but if the Latverian bastard knows where you work and thinks you have some connection to whatever it is they’re after...maybe you could reach out to Dr. Richards. Maybe something happened. I don’t see any news, but...but Richards may know before the rest of us.”

Karen groans on the other end of the line. “He is an _asshole_. I might risk Doom.”

Trish had the misfortune of running into Reed and Sue at a fundraiser last year while battling off his brother-in-law’s repeated advances. He _was_ an asshole. If Victor von Doom held a grudge against him, well. She believes Reed probably deserves it, at least a little.

“I can try, if you want. I don’t know if your vigilant neighbor is magic-proof, so if Doom finds you...I really don’t mind..”

“Ugh. No. I have to head that way anyway to meet Foggy for lunch. I could swing by Baxter on my way.”

“Good luck. Let me know how it turns out.”

After a glum goodbye, Trish tries to focus on her show notes for the rest of the week, but her attention keeps drifting to the web browser. 

What business _does_ Victor von Doom have with Russian opiates in New York? She keeps glancing at her phone hoping for some update as to what Karen has found, but the screen stays black.

It appears to be another odd, fruitless day. Trish runs into dead end after dead end trying to resurrect the Brennan story, but she rejects all the proposal packages production sends her way regardless. By the time lunch rolls around, Andrew looks ready to throttle her or an intern one.

“We’ve got to finish planning next week’s shows,” he sighs, pinching between his eyebrows when Trish vetoes his last suggestion out of hand. “The advertising team is up my ass about it already. Give me _something_.”

“Just…” Trish chews the inside of her cheek. Perhaps she is being a little unreasonable. “Give me until the end of the day, okay? I promise.”

Her producer doesn’t give her the grace of a goodbye before marching out of her office. Grimacing, a headache starting to pound between her ears, Trish tries to work.

* * *

By the end of the day, she has nothing. Twenty minutes before she knows Andrew will cycle back to her office, Trish makes a run for it. She snags her ID badge and heads for the roof access before remembering he and some of the research team smoke up there a few times a day, instead turning promptly for the sublevel garage.

There’s a distant kind of gurgle from a drain somewhere when she makes it down, the air cool and misty. 

On one hand, she didn’t need to work. She could live her whole life, if she lived with reasonable modesty, on nothing but her savings and royalties and maybe an Instagram ad or two, if she felt like it.

But then what would she _do_? Her whole life can’t be Patsy. 

It’s looking like her life isn’t about to be _journalism_ either. She fucking hates it when her mother is right. 

After making several laps of the garage, Trish forces herself back up the stairs, dreading the fluff pieces she’s about to be forced to swallow. Before she can make it past the lobby, though, the receptionist flags her down. 

“Trish! I would have brought them up to you, you didn’t need to come down.”

She blinks owlishly as Jules rises from her desk. “What?”

“The flowers! I called Andrew to let you know…” In her hands, Trish sees a vase of rich, almost sea-blue and violet anemone, studded through with white and barely blush-pink peonies. 

Trish accepts them numbly, for want of anything better to do. She decides to take the elevator up the rest of the way, grateful to catch one by herself as she spots a mint-green card tucked inside the full blooms. 

“ _Are these more acceptable?_ ”

She locks the door to her office and ignores Andrew’s pointed knocking — then his irritated calling out — as she stares at the flowers on her desk, fingers steepled in front of her.

Trish has found herself, perhaps, in a bit of a pickle.

When she has her next therapy appointment, she will surely have to unpack why she doesn’t feel more...afraid? Freaked out? Insulted?

But that is two whole weeks away.

For shits and giggles, just to make sure she has enough to talk about for the whole hour of her appointment, Trish types in her search bar: “ _flower meanings_.” Her lip curls back over her teeth a little when she clicks on the first link.

_Anemone represent anticipation and protection. Blue and purple flowers are given to someone held in high regard, indeed, in the past purple flowers were reserved for royalty._

_Ugh_. Next page. 

_Peonies traditionally represent honor._

_Ugh!_ She’s ready to click out of the window altogether when she catches the next sentence:

_For years, peonies have been used in wedding bouquets to represent happy marriages._

Trish rolls her office chair away from her desk. She stays there for a very long time. 

What man knows fuck-all about flower meanings, anyway? He probably just gave the florist a list of colors and a price range and let them deal with it. 

Because though the card isn’t signed, Trish is no idiot. She knows who these came from. She feels it in her gut the same place she felt it when she first saw Jessica cleave a slab of marble in two.

But _why_? _How_?

Slowly, she inches back to the desk. Her phone, resting near her keyboard, is alight when she is close enough to look at it. Most of them are from Andrew.

Trish reasons that pragmatism is perhaps not her nature, exactly, but she can probably swing it this once. She Googles the bastard, and forty minutes later attaches the outline to an email for Andrew and the research team.

If Namor wanted to fuck around, Trish could play ball.

* * *

Back in her apartment, Trish sets the vase on her coffee table, and she studies it as she weighs out her next options. Official press channels take time, but Trish could maybe wiggle around them if she called in enough favors. Before she forgets, she taps out a quick message to Karen before she begins her grovelling tour.

“How did it go with Reed?”

“You won’t believe me if I told you,” she texts back. Trish waits for some explanation, but none comes.

_Twenty minutes. If I don’t hear anything then, I’ll get worried_.

In the meantime, Trish starts calling her way down her phone’s contact list. Captain America can’t be that hard to get ahold of.

* * *

Trish can’t get his goddamn number. When she tries Karen again, she doesn’t catch her, either. Great. She calls Jess for something to do, for something to go _right_ and cheer her up, but that goes to voicemail, too.

What a load of bullshit. 

She washes her hands in her kitchen sink to start preparing dinner, but hesitates before turning off the tap.

No one is here to commit her to a psychiatric facility, and she doesn’t have anyone else to talk to right now, anyway.

“For the record,” she says to the still running water, “my favorite flowers are lily of the valley, and I hate getting gifts at work. It’s obnoxious. Oh, and if you fuck up the plumbing in my apartment, I will end you,” she tacks on before finally turning it off. “Also, leave me alone,” she adds, staring into the drain. It doesn’t answer. 

Her therapist was going to earn their money at her next appointment.

Trish is breading some chicken to fry when Karen finally calls her back, and she answers the phone with sticky, floury fingers before setting it on the counter away from the popping grease so she can hear. 

“So, development,” Karen greets her, sounding bone-tired. “Doom is in New York.”

The oil spits and crackles as she plops the chicken in. “In what part of New York?”

“Ah. Well. The _Bulletin_ part. I...I tried to get in touch with Reed after lunch, and all I got was fucking _harrassed_ by Johnny for my trouble. He wouldn’t answer any questions unless I gave him my number, and when he finally took the hint, he said I would have to make an appointment to see _Dr. Richards_.” Trish hears the sneer in Karen’s voice, and finds one of her own curling her lip as she flips the chicken in the oil.

“Pig.”

“Worse than a pig,” Karen huffs. “Anyway. I. I came back to the _Bulletin_ and someone was in my office.”

“Someone?”

“Lord Protector, in the flesh.”

The tongs in her hand nearly clatter to the floor. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, yes. I’m fine. I — he said he wanted to apologize.”

For a minute, it’s nothing but the sizzle of the oil in the pan.

“Apologize,” Trish echoes.

“For the damage his doombot caused to my office. For not apprehending the Russian before I was injured,” Karen’s voice gets a little shaky here, but Trish can hardly blame her. “And to assure me that my safety would be accounted for going forward.”

Suddenly not hungry, Trish hastily turns the burner off, abandoning the chicken to greasy purgatory as she takes a heavy seat at the bar.

“Accounted for how?”

“He offered me a doombot until he says he is, uh. How did he put it? ‘Confident the Russian concern was thoroughly addressed.’”

“...When you say, ‘offered you a doombot—’”

“I told him no,” Karen says quickly. “But...I am pretty sure he sent one anyway. Or that is a funny shaped fly outside of my window.”

“Where are you?”

She sighs on the other end of the phone. “Home,” she offers, reluctant.

Trish is already pulling her shoes on. “I’m on my way.”

* * *

“So, a few things.”

Trish, who regrets living in Tribeca sometimes when it means having to Uber/run/fight her way through Manhattan to get the good gossip, barely hears Karen over the noise of trying to catch her breath. 

“It’s not heroin.”

“What?”

Trish collapses onto Karen’s hand me down couch, smelling Karen’s perfume as she settles beside her, a sweet amber and something like dark coffee. 

“The Russians aren’t smuggling opiates through the port, that’s not what they’re selling. That’s why Doom gives a fuck.”

“Still not following.”

“It’s a bastardized serum like Jess was given. It’s some...people-enhancer thing. They’ve been smuggling it out from old HYDRA bases as they uncover them. I tried to look in the SHIELD dump that hasn’t been wiped from the internet, and I think...Russia has been pushing towards the Ukraine, right? And Latveria is next, if they keep moving west like that. If they wanted to get past Doombots or _magic_ or whatever….to have a chance, they would need help. Regular soldiers couldn’t do it.”

“He just...told you this?”

Karen shifts in her seat, looking up to the ceiling before taking a long breath, shutting her eyes as if bracing herself. “So, apparently Doom reads the _Bulletin_. Also apparently the Russians knew I was looking into them before yesterday, and that meant Doom knew who I was before yesterday, too. Apparently also they are having a dinner at the Latverian embassy this weekend that I am...apparently invited to.”

“ _Excuse me_? Invited — invited in what capacity?”

“I’m not sure.” Karen rubs a hand over her face. Some of her lipstick smears onto her chin with it. “I’m still processing. He was...really candid. More than I thought he would be. He answered everything I asked. Maybe he just likes monologuing?”

“Holy shit.” 

“Yeah. When Eliot said we needed to expand our readership, I don’t know if he thought about stretching this far.” Karen’s head lolls over the back of the couch to eye Trish shrewdly. “All that said, do you have plans Saturday night? I need a date to a state function.” A pause. “And maybe to borrow some shoes?”

Trish doesn’t hear anything for a minute but a kind of ringing rush between her ears, presumably her brain trying to catch up with the pace of the last few minutes of her life. When she feels a little footing underneath her, she is struck by a thought.

“Who is gonna be there, exactly? Like...like anyone Captain America adjacent, do you think?”

Karen’s narrow brow furrows. “Why do you ask?”

“I need a first person account of the Baltic Sea campaign in World War II. Specifically Lake Ladoga in September 1943.”

“...Why…?” Karen draws out the last vowel expectantly. 

“I need to verify some secondhand information. He’s the easiest way. Barnes fell from the train a week later, the mountain they were on was only a few miles away. I know he had to have been in the area, and I could use a character witness..”

“That doesn’t really answer my question, you know.”

“When I have my answers, you’ll have yours. And your shoes. Deal?”

They both look at each other for a minute before descending into only-slightly hysterical giggles. 

It’s shaping up to be an odd week. 


	3. Chapter 3

Saturday morning, Trish wakes with a kind of resignation heavy in her belly, like she can sense today will be a day full of fuckery. Certainly, she feels justified in her clairvoyant sensibilities when she answers the door some forty minutes after waking to find a sharply suited courier waiting for her.

Patting her wet hair away from her face and adjusting the tie of her silky robe, Trish eyes the box in his gloved hands warily.

“And the man who requested your service gave you no name or number?”

Grimacing, perhaps sensing that his tip was in danger, the courier tries again. “Ma’am, the only instruction was to deliver the gift to you. Please, you can call my boss if you have any more questions. I have other deliveries to make today…”

Trish sighs. She was always going to _accept_ it. Curiosity and the cat, and all that. “Thank you. Have a good day.”

He looks relieved to see the other side of her door again, and Trish only blames him a little. The flat box is covered in black satin,, reasonably heavy, and unmarked.. She settles on her couch in front of the flowers (just starting to droop, but Trish never claimed to be an attentive gardener) and finds the inside is lined in a similar silk, but that is easy to ignore in favor of the shining jewelry nestled into it.

Creamy pearls rest in buttery gold settings with leaves and stalks of faceted peridot and emerald, the pearl buds capped with delicate diamonds to mime the fluted bell shape of lily of the valley. The flowers and their stems lace together around the necklace in a pretty, ethereal kind of silhouette all the way up to the clasp, a little golden trident.

Goosebumps prickle her arms, the back of her neck, seemingly head to toe. A strange kind of flutter stirs up in her belly, her face feels cool as the blood surely drains from it.

She hadn’t felt afraid before. It had been a weird kind of joke, maybe. A standoff with low stakes. But this was...hardly little. And maybe she doesn’t feel _afraid_ , per se...but she feels...wary, in a new way. Watched. This has become something that Trish...isn’t sure she is prepared for, just now.

Like in her office, Trish has to ask herself: _how and why_? Why, why, why?

Trish finds herself tracing the swooping lines of green gemstone, delicate and _exquisite_ under her fingertips. She could hardly throw _this_ in the ocean.

She had to wear a formal dress tonight anyway, she reasons. What else could she do _but_ wear the necklace, too? After all of this weirdness, hadn’t she earned at least an evening wearing a piece of jewelry that she would normally covet from far, _far_ afar? 

As she goes about her day, answering e-mails and researching on her laptop, making lunch, finally getting ready for the dinner party, Trish takes the box with her throughout her apartment. It sits in constant, close orbit of her elbow no matter where she settles, and she spends at least half of her time performing any one task looking at it, as if concerned it would disappear if not under full-time supervision. 

When she takes lunch, she helps herself to a ginger ale from the fridge instead of pouring herself a glass of water from the BRITA tap. When she posts up at her vanity to get gussied, she wipes her hands on a makeup wipe from under the sink rather than running the tap to wash her hands free from hairspray.

This is, perhaps, not a sustainable plan. But Trish would challenge anyone else to make different decisions under the circumstances.

Karen arrives as Trish is pulling her curled hair up into a loose, low bun, and they finish putting on their makeup together. Trish all but cakes Karen’s cheeks with blush to make up for how blanched her face is, and has to layer about three different lipsticks on her mouth for the same reason.

“You weren’t this nervous facing down machine guns and magic ninjas. You’re white as a sheet.”

“He has e-mailed me every day, you know.”

Trish, smudging a little copper eyeliner under her own eyelashes, stills. “About what?”

“How I am doing. Questions about the stories I’ve published. If I have any allergies for dinner tonight. If I have any _preferences_ for dinner tonight.”

“...Okay,” Trish says softly. She grabs Karen’s hand and squeezes briefly. “Okay. We’ll figure it out.”

“Am I reading it wrong?”

Trish combs through her lashes and caps her eyeliner before answering, leading them to her closet. “Let me take a look at him tonight. We’ll know more when this is all over.”

Karen allows Trish to dress her in a way that Jess was never able to tolerate. She is too tall for any of Trish’s long gowns, but fills out a crimson wiggle dress so well Trish wolf-whistles when she’s finally zipped all the way up. The v-necked silk top has a fluttery little attached cape and the oxblood leather skirt lands below the knee on her endless legs. Karen is apparently kind of spoken for, and for a minute Trish thinks that’s a damn shame. 

“Take that home with you tonight,” Trish tells her seriously, digging out a pair of Fendi slingback pumps with enough _oomph_ to stand up to the dress. “I can’t be seen in it again without shame. Take these too, really knock ‘em out.”

“I don’t know, I’m borrowing so much already it feels like I’m playing dress up —”

“It couldn’t hurt,” Trish presses the dangling earrings into Karen’s hands. “Go for broke. When’s the next state dinner you’ll attend? You want answers, you charm them out of these assholes. And these types of assholes like pretty things. You want Victor von Doom to think you didn’t put any effort into his schmancy party? Will that encourage him to be candid?”

Karen slides them in along with the matching bracelet while Trish dons her own dress. She probably would have agreed to come with Karen under any circumstances just for the excuse to wear it, an impulse buy too formal to wear most anywhere else. The black velvet has a sweetheart neckline cut off the shoulder and a slit in its floor length skirt _just_ shy of midthigh. Because she is just fucking around at this point, playing dress up almost as much as Karen, she steps into her highest Tom Ford d’Orsay heels before reaching for The Necklace.

Karen half-chokes as Trish slides it on.

“How much did _that_ cost?” 

“That is a good question,” she mutters. “Do you have the invitation? With the seal?”

Trish combs through her bags as Karen holds it out, the parchment thick and the lettering certainly hand-written and heavily flourished like proper, old-school calligraphy. 

She hesitates before grabbing the Rafe purse and shoving the letter into it, along with both of their phones, a tube of lipstick, and some concealer. It’s a slightly oblong, hardshell clutch covered in mother of pearl, the hinges and the clasp gold. It looks like an abalone seashell. Trish doesn’t have time to dwell on it.

* * *

The Latverian Embassy is an Edwardian building settled on a plush green lot behind a heavy brick and wrought iron gate. They hardly knock on the stained oak door before it swings open, a thin man in a dark, close-cut suit waving them inside. He greets them by name before leading them through the foyer and into the pleasantly warm main hall. It smells of leather, oak polish, and cigar smoke that grows stronger as they are led to a lavish drawing room dressed in shades of forest green, gold, and ink black.

Whatever Trish is expecting — she’d been to fancy parties before, sure; the Met Gala, a few gubernatorial lunches, premier parties, what have you — from her first state dinner, what greets them in the study is not it.

Sat at a heavily molded circular table in the center of the room, two men drink what looks like very expensive liquor in finely upholstered, high-backed chairs. They are the only ones in the room, and they both rise to their feet as Trish and Karen are introduced and promptly left behind, the closing of the door echoing a little in the space. 

_What the fuck._

_What the fuck._

_What the f-u-c-k?_

The slightly wider man steps forward first, half of his face puckered and shiny with a long-healed, ruddy scar. His dark hair is shorn fairly short, and a neat beard covers his blunt jaw. Distantly, Trish thinks this is strange. Surely that chafes in the mask — because that can only be one man, Trish is certain even before he holds his hand out and introduces himself as Victor, kissing Karen’s hand before kissing Trish’s.

“Thank you for coming.” His voice is actually kind of pleasant behind whatever modulator is in his suit, and Trish is pretty sure the little ringing echo around it is actually not from him at all, rather from her own ears as the second man approaches. “May I introduce Namor, King of Atlantis. He’ll be joining us this evening.”

Karen chokes a little at Trish’s right. Behind Doom’s shoulder, Trish sees Namor’s mouth lift up in a sharp grin. 

The necklace at her throat weighs as much as the center of the earth. It’s her imagination, but Trish is sure it burns and scalds her skin for a minute. She has half a thought to wrench it off right there and fling it into some dark corner where it is not her problem anymore.

“Namor, this is Ms. Karen Page, who I mentioned before.”

Namor holds Trish’s gaze until the last possible second before greeting Karen. “Of course. Lovely to meet you, Ms. Page. I hear you are a remarkable talent.”

Karen shoots her an apologetic glance before returning Namor’s greeting. When Doom tries to introduce Trish, however, Namor cuts him off.

“By _lucky coincidence_ , we are already in acquaintance.” He takes her hand before Trish can try and step away. “I need to apologize to you, Ms. Walker.”

That takes her off guard, and she frowns watching him lean down and brush his mouth against her knuckles as if she were watching it happen to someone else.

“Apologize?”

“Mm.” He doesn’t immediately let go of her hand, even as he straightens. “I misjudged how beautiful you would look tonight.” His eyes flick down to her throat, smile widening as Trish feels her chest splotch under the attention. “I didn’t know it was possible for a human to look so tempting.”

“Perhaps you should apologize for not disclosing your _premonition_ -type abilities before now,” Trish smiles, squeezing his hand still in hers and wishing, not for the first time that she had even half the strength behind her as Jess did. “To even know I would be here. I recall you saying you weren’t a mutant, before.”

If anything, Namor looks more delighted. He brushes her knuckles with his thumb before releasing her. 

“The apology tour continues! Tell me how to make it up to you and I’ll see it done.”

Trish grinds her teeth and hopes it passes as a grin. “Let me consider all the options available to me. Thoroughly.”

When they are led into a formal dining room for supper, Karen grabs her wrist and mouths “ _I’m sorry_.” 

Trish gives her a thin smile. “There’s no way you could have known.” she murmurs, low as she can. “Don’t let this stop you. We have plans.”

In the name of pragmatism, Trish is not surprised and does not fight when Namor pulls out her chair at the table and sits next to her. He smells of the same crisp, green thing as he had by the sea though he is dressed in a normal-person suit. The legs of his pants are cut short, she notices as he takes his seat, and there is something still off about his ankle, but she can hardly get a good look. 

Across the table, Trish watches Karen carefully not notice the weight of Doom’s full attention on her as two servers appear with trays of their first course. Trish perhaps hasn’t been to enough of them to compare, but she cannot help but feel like this is not, in fact, a state dinner. If she is honest with herself, Trish is stuck with the pesky, persistent thought that they have been duped into a double date.

* * *

“But by that same logic,” Karen turns in her seat to face Doom directly, one of her elbows on the table, a glass of wine in one hand that has bolstered a bit of color to her cheeks and a bit of steel in her spine. “You could say that surveillance should extend _everywhere_ else —”

Trish watches them volley political philosophy on the other side of the table with a distant kind of disbelief. She eats mechanically just to keep her mouth from gaping open. They’d had a rich _borscht_ type soup and savory doughnuts for their first course, which Trish spent pointedly trying to add to their growing discussion to avoid speaking to Namor, who seemed pointedly delighted as her efforts grew more and more fruitless. Halfway through the third course — a whole goose stuffed with apples — her luck runs out. 

“It looks like we are on our own now in finding entertainment for the rest of the meal..”

Trish takes a very large bite, taking her time to chew it as long as possible. At her left, Namor snorts. 

“Do you prefer Patsy or Trish? I notice Ms. Page only uses the latter.”

“You can call me Ms. Walker when you have to speak to me at all.” She sniffs. 

She feels his shoulders shake a little with laughter as he cuts the meat on his plate. The side of his foot brushes against hers very briefly, but he doesn’t speak again. Trish’s brow furrows. By the time they are nearly done with the poultry and moving on to the beef course, Trish is suspicious enough to clear her throat, prim as she’s able.

“How are you here.”

“I received an invitation, same as you,” he answers smoothly, shrugging one shoulder and looking at the veal now on his plate like it is far more interesting than anything she could say.

A muscle flutters in her jaw. “How do you know Do— Victor?”

“That is a long story. Perhaps longer than dinner permits.”

Across from them, Doom laughs at something Karen says. On their side of the table, Trish contemplates murder.

“Atlantis isn’t a UN member, is it? It can’t be, I didn’t believe it was real until tonight. People don’t know about it.”

His eyebrows lift in a little surprise before he speaks, slow like he’s trying to riddle out why she asked. “I see no need. They can provide nothing I could not manage myself. And it is better to remain known to few.”

“So if I kill you, it wouldn’t _really_ be an international issue. I couldn’t be taken to the ICJ, or whatever.”

“Unfortunately, there are some who would notice my absence. Atlantis isn’t without any allies, and I can’t imagine they will be pleased with you.”

“Allies like Latveria?” Trish frowns, glass halfway to her mouth as she thinks of something. “Landlocked Eastern European Latveria. Hey, what’s that about?”

At this, Namor does seem surprised, finally looking up from his meal and to Trish’s face. 

(Well, she carefully does not notice that he looks first and most obviously at her necklace, the line of her throat, the rise of her chest, before settling on her face. Well. Her _mouth_ , but then kind of her face generally.)

“I suppose for the same reason as I avoid the UN, Ms. Walker. What could I need from anyone else?”

Trish swallows something suddenly quite thick in her throat, looking back to her plate. Was this really what she wanted to talk about?

“Are politics the way into your good graces as well as Ms. Page’s?” He sounds genuinely curious, and for whatever reason that sours her mood a little.

“Do you want to get in my good graces?”

“Let’s not play coy here, Ms. Walker. We are both too bright and our time together too short.”

“Is it?” She hums. She puts her fork down and sits back a little in her seat. “Alright. Let’s be clear, then.”

“At your pleasure,” he smiles blandly. Trish itches again with that phantom urge to punch him in the face.

“Did you come tonight because I would be here?”

“Though that would be meaningful to you, it’s only a reward at the end of a very long few weeks. Victor and I have been working on a project together, I confess I was roped into coming already before Ms. Page let us know you would be joining as well.” He pauses. “I didn’t know you two were acquainted.”

The end of his sentence trails up in question like he wants her to elaborate on that.

“Alright. What project?” She asks instead.

“Ah, it would be gauche to discuss at the table like this in fair company. I really shouldn’t until we’re finished anyway.”

_Wily bastard_.

“Fine. Did you get the pearl?”

“I did. Was it the color that you didn’t like?” He asks innocently.

“Why did you give it to me?” She finds herself fiddling with the necklace before catching herself. Though Namor’s eyes are on it, she doesn’t release her grip. He is looking at her chest when he answers.

“I wanted you to have it.” A pause. “I wanted to see what you would do with it.”

“And did I act in the way you expected?”

“Not quite, which has proved preferable.” 

“How much did the necklace cost?”

Namor laughs, sounding a little startled. “You think I would tell you?”

“Worth a shot,” she shrugs. “Tell me about Lake Ladoga.”

“It’s not a necklace anyway, it’s a cr— what did you say?”

Trish blinks at him owlishly. “What did _you_ say?”

For a long, heavy minute, they only stare at each other in some Cold War impasse. 

“Are you planning a trip to the Baltics, Ms. Walker?”

“What do you mean it’s not a necklace, King Namor?”

“ _King_ Namor?” They have apparently drawn Doom and Karen out from their bubble, and Victor speaks to them now with his eyebrow cocked expectantly. “Namor, I hope you haven’t been making Ms. Walker use your title like that all evening.”

“I assure you,” Namor says wryly, “that was a first.”

Desert is a layered torte of airy meringue with layers of rose preserve and strawberry cream, and the entire course Trish wallows in the stiff, awkward energy on their side of the table. What a _waste_.

When Doom rises and offers them a tour of the embassy and the grounds, there is nothing really to do except accept. When Namor offers her his arm, however, she hesitates. In front of them, Karen has her hand in the crook of Doom’s elbow, and they are in deep discussion again that seems to require no input at all from Trish or Namor or anyone else in the world.

What a very, very odd week.

Trish gingerly accepts Namor’s offer, and they follow several paces behind their host. Though Doom distractedly points out a few notable artifacts or architectural features in the first few minutes, that trails off as he gets drawn into a private conversation with Karen — Trish thinks it’s about taxes and education earmarking and block grants, but she admittedly doesn’t try to listen very hard — and then it is just Trish and Namor. 

They follow through the first two floors of the embassy before being led out to the garden. Trish chews on her next words the whole time.

“Why did you come to me on the beach that day?”

Namor hums. “Is it hard to believe that men approach you because you’re beautiful?”

“Most men who want to hit on me don’t trap me in a fishbowl.” She glances up, grateful she wore heels high enough their height difference isn’t so great. “What about after the beach?”

“After living so long, you develop a good instinct for people who are interesting.”

“As King of Atlantis,” Trish says drily, “are interesting people in short supply?”

“More than you might guess. Not everyone is worth my time.” They settle on one of the stone benches around the fountain in Doom’s gardens. The sparse lantern light makes speaking a little easier; in the darkness she can’t see his punchable face. 

“Did you really fight in World War Two?”

“I did.” A pause. “Why did you ask about Ladoga?”

“Did you...did you do that yourself that day? Tuloksa flooded and it took out the Finnish fleet there. No one could explain why the flood happened, and the survivors were never able to describe what attacked them.”

“I see a Nazi, I act accordingly.”

Trish feels herself smile despite herself.

“I plan to be in New York for some time longer. May I call on you?”

“You _are_ old,” Trish says, just to buy time. “Call on me for what?”

“Your company, of course.”

“If you aren’t too busy chasing down Russian drug smugglers in the bay, you could give me a call.”

Namor whips around to look at her, eyebrows near up to his hairline. The flickering light throws his face into odd relief. He looks more foreign like this, and Trish isn’t sure if that makes any of this easier or harder.

“It doesn’t take a genius, pal. Sounds like you’re a living submarine, who better to lurk in the water for him?”

Very slowly, Namor turns to more fully face her on the bench, their knees brushing. He reaches out and touches the necklace, careful not to touch her skin at all.

“If I send you something else, will you throw it in the ocean?”

“If I do, will you be able to get it in time before someone steals it?”

“I’ve been told I swim quite fast,” he says solemnly, and Trish can’t not laugh a little.

At the end of the night, Namor helps her to her feet and walks with them to the door. He glances at the shell of her purse with a closed off expression on his face before brushing his mouth against her knuckles. After a moment of hesitation, he presses a brief kiss to the inside of her wrist before releasing her.

“Thank you for your time, Ms. Walker.”

Something unwelcome flutters in her belly. “Don’t drown in the next few weeks you’re still in town.”

His mouth twitches, eyes a little bright. “What about after I leave New York?”

“That’s your business.”

She hooks her arm through with Karen’s and tries to walk down the stairs with both haste and dignity. The gate outside of the embassy can’t come quickly enough.


	4. Chapter 4

“Should we have taken the car he offered?” Karen winces. “My feet are killing me.”

“We’ll call an Uber after,” Trish assures her, guiding them to the Subway. “I am so hungry I could chew my arm off.”

“How? I thought I was gonna have to be rolled out of the door like Veruca Salt after the fourth course.”

“Did you?” Trish muses. This was probably foolish — they catch more than one odd look as they descend the steps to the station, and she is certain she spots the assessing gazes of more than one person who clearly debate mugging them on the spot. “Here I thought you were too occupied to eat.”

“What about you?” 

They board a train heading towards Washington Heights, where Trish is dreaming of mofongo and croquettes at her favorite Dominican place. She tries to focus on that instead of the implications of Karen’s question.

“What kind of story do you think you can spin this as? Did you get what you wanted?”

Karen doesn’t answer for a minute, playing with the bracelet on her wrist. “I’m not sure...I. Hey.” She lolls her head back against the seat and looks at Trish with her brow furrowed. “What do you think it means that the men I attract are like...that?”

“I think it means…” Trish chews the inside of her cheek, unwilling to think about anything heavy for the rest of the evening, perhaps the rest of the week, “maybe if more people got to oogle those gams of yours, world peace would be attainable.”

Snorting, Karen slides down in her seat and rests her head on Trish’s shoulder. They ride to the Heights together, and when they sit down and start digging into their mofongo, they don’t talk about Latveria, Atlantis, or anything Y-chromosome related at all.

* * *

Trish isn’t quite sure what it says about her that she isn’t surprised — in fact, kind of expects — a bouquet the next morning. She accepts it from the courier with much less argument than the day prior, setting it on her kitchen bartop and running her fingers across the creamy petals lightly. The vase brims with lily of the valley and is studded through with forget-me-nots, filled out further by some frothy Queen Anne’s lace and a few waxy green leaves. The card is all but buried in it, and she flips it open while gnawing on her bottom lip.

“ _Ms. Walker,_

_I feel I owe you some recompense, as I have thought near constantly of how you looked last night since the door first closed behind you, and confess most of these thoughts have been ungentlemanly. I want to ensure you are aware I am capable of the civility you deserve._

_Enjoy. I will see you soon.”_

Trish reads it three times. Four. Five. 

She takes in a deep breath, leaning heavily against the counter. What had she gotten herself _into_? 

Being attracted to Namor wasn’t the issue. Even being kind of a dickhead — Trish was not above admitting she had dated assholes purely for the kind of aggressive sex you can only have with someone you don’t all-the-way like — wasn’t the problem. Being superhuman in some regard wasn’t exactly a problem, either, given the others of that ilk in her life, as much trouble as they were. Being King of Atlantis, while odd, was also not a huge issue, perhaps. She’d dated politicians before, and it couldn’t be that different. The power difference was daunting, but she could stick up for herself. She would hardly be taken advantage of anymore by _anyone_.

No, the problems, if she is honest, are that she is not as pissed off or freaked out by his weird omnipresence in her life — clearly able to listen through or airdrop random shit via her _pipes_ , knowing where she lived and worked after giving him a false name to avoid that to begin with — as she should be, and the nagging feeling that this was not some kind of hook-up situation. This feels like...like _courtship,_ that old shit she read about in books or in the Austen adaptations she ate ice cream while watching in the wee hours. You aren’t casually sending bouquets like this. You don’t casually send jewelry to a hookup that costs close to seven figures.

 _That_ was a fucking problem. 

The next day, no flowers come. Instead, a bottle of Frederic Malle’s _Promise_ arrives nestled in cobalt-blue velvet. Trish, rather than alarmed that Namor knows what perfume she wears and is unbothered to drop another $400 on her after giving her The Necklace, which she has embarrassingly taken to wearing around the house with her pajamas after coming home from work, is...a little...wooed? 

Not a _lot_. But at least in equal ratio to her lingering wariness. She takes the bottle and puts it in her safe along with The Necklace, all the notes from the flowers, and everything Jessica and Kozlov related in her possession. 

Three hours later, her phone lights up with a text from an unknown number. The area code 207.

“Who the hell?” She mutters, swiping the notification open.

“Are you free this evening?”

Trish chews the inside of her cheek. If she is being honest with herself, she isn’t interested in going out tonight with anyone not Namor, so she isn’t afraid of being wrong and scaring them off if she is mistaken.

“Do phones work underwater?” She sends back, which gets a near immediate reply.

“Phones AND Google. How else do you think I found you?”

Surprisingly mundane. Trish isn’t sure how that makes her feel.

“By the same magic that makes pearls appear in my bathtub? What do you mean ‘free’?”

“Free for me to take advantage of your time.”

Trish forces herself not to answer for a few minutes, though that may only make her look more desperate, not less. It was easier when he was just a douchebag on the beach, not...not _this_. 

While she waits, she saves his contact information. Just because she can, she sets a custom ringtone for him from the _Moana_ soundtrack.

See? She was cool. A _cool girl_. She held some cards here.

“Where am I meeting you?”

“I can come pick you up at 8.”

Trish wrinkles her nose. He knows where she lives to send her gifts, but it feels like something else for _him_ to actually _be_ here. 

“I would rather meet you there.”

He doesn’t answer for a few minutes. Trish tells herself if he is someone who would be put off by her taking a few safety precautions, even nominal, she isn’t missing out no matter who he is or what fancy shit he can afford. Trish can buy herself any nice thing he could, anyway. She isn’t swayed by nice things — The Necklace aside, but she would argue to anyone that is truly a special case — so much as she is the...thoughtfulness? Proof that he had been paying attention? 

Was her self-esteem so far in the tubes?

A headache pinches between her brows. However this ends up, she is going to have to tell Jess one day. There is no scenario possible where that doesn’t blow up in her face. 

Arguably, she should enjoy it while she can, by that logic.

“Of course,” he finally sends back, followed by an address. As Trish is typing out her reply, he sends another.

“Devastating as you are in it, that dress is probably not appropriate for tonight, unless you want me to take it off of you properly, which will certainly delay our plans. The decision is up to you.”

Trish’s hands still. _Cool girl_ , she tells herself. _You are a cool girl with real, actual self-esteem and you know that when the King of Atlantis texts you it sounds like Jemaine Clement pretending to be a giant cloisoneé crab._

“Forward of you to think I would let you undress me in any circumstance. A few shiny things does not an easy lay make.”

“I would never insult you otherwise.” A brief pause as Trish watches the three dots appear and disappear more than once. “But I won’t insult either of us by not being clear, either.”

It is a bad, stupid, idiot decision to make when Trish makes it, but this whole venture is stupid, so what is one more wrong turn?

“Clear? Clear about what?”

“My intentions, coy woman. I’ll see you tonight.”

Trish doesn’t answer that, and he doesn’t send anything else for the rest of the day. 

Jess leaves her a voicemail asking for a rain check on their dinner from earlier in the week. Trish texts her back saying she’s busy before sending Karen the address Namor texted her before.

“If you don’t hear from me by tomorrow start looking here.” She follows it with a fish emoji, and Karen sends her back a thumbs up and a clover almost immediately. Trish knows she should ask about Doom, but also knows she doesn’t have the available emotional bandwidth to be a good friend about it even if she does ask. 

She dabs a little extra perfume on her wrists as she’s getting ready that evening, and it feels like the place he’d kissed her the night before is warm to the touch. _Embarrassing_. 

Namor hadn’t been specific about what they would be doing, so Trish slips on a fluttery, sky-blue sundress and hopes for the best. Herrera had rarely let her down before. Before she can torture herself dwelling on the possibilities waiting for her, she snags one of her cross-body bags, slips on her favorite sandals, and makes for the parking garage.

* * *

The smell of the boardwalk pier greets her before the sight of it — caramel and popcorn and the salt of the water. In the dimming night, the glow of neon lights and the flashing bulbs from the games and rides freckle the sky. 

Namor, King of Atlantis, was taking her to...a boardwalk? As a date?

At least she was dressed appropriately, Trish reasons. 

At least she will have a full and rewarding therapy appointment next week, more like.

When she approaches the entry, Namor is easy to spot, but Trish still hesitates before walking up as he seems to be in deep discussion with an equally tall, rail-thin man dressed like a Ren Faire roadie. Trish eavesdrops with abandon as she comes close.

“I would do the same for you, Namor,” the thin man grinds out. “As a _professional courtesy._ ”

“Certainly, Stephen. You would be welcome in my home whenever you wish to use it,” Namor smiles blandly. “Provided you can find it first.”

“I’ll give Stark _your_ number then,” the other man seethes, “and he can call _you_ at all hours with his complaints!”

“Feel free.” Namor has caught her eye over Stephen’s shoulder, and he grins at her even as he continues speaking. “When you are able to find that, too. Ms. Walker, you are a balm.”

The thin man frowns at her as Namor reaches for her hand, though he bypasses it entirely, instead using it to draw her close enough to press his mouth, brief and light, to the highest swell of her cheekbone where it meets her temple.

“Am I interrupting?” She asks, just to keep herself from thinking about it.

“You are the reason I am here,” he points out. “You could not interrupt.”

When Trish looks to her left, the other man is gone. Frowning, she glances back to Namor to find him studying her. “Who was that?”

“A fan who wanted my autograph. Have you eaten?”

“I can eat at home,” Trish snips, mouth pursed. “Which is where I will spend the evening if you insist on lying to me.”

He catches her arm as she turns heel to march back to her car. “Wait, wait, wait. Stephen Strange works with Victor from time to time. He was trying to iron out a misunderstanding between myself and the Avengers.”

“What kind of misunderstanding?” She cocks her head, blinking at him owlishly. She would have heard of any explosions or declarations of war or — or whatever else that would have gotten the attention of Stark Tower.

“They mistook my appearance in Midtown for something nefarious, for whatever reason. Captain Rogers has always hated Victor, he needs very little prodding to peacock this way.”

They begin walking to the boardwalk entry. “You...really know Captain America, huh? How old _are_ you?”

She can see a little frown tug the corners of his mouth and he seems to take a long, deliberative moment before speaking. “Would it be petty, at this juncture, to let you know that his leaning is elsewhere?”

“It would be very petty.” _And unnecessary_ , she thinks, but keeps it to herself.

He puts his hand very nearly on her lower back as he shepherds them past the ticketbooth and onto the pier proper. 

“Namor,” Trish prompts. “I notice you didn’t answer.”

“I am not sure,” he sighs. “We hardly keep time the same way. I met him in...maybe 1942, by your time. I was a younger man then, and I am older now.”

Namor shrugs as he guides them to a stall selling funnel cakes. Trish gnaws her lip. How...would that feel, to talk about years and years passing with no concern at all? To not have to track your own age, for it not to matter at all?

“Are you —” Trish cuts herself off, feeling foolish.

“Yes?”

“Are you, ah. I mean, that is...are you. Can you die?”

“Do you still plan to kill me, Ms. Walker?”

When she sends a withering glare his way, Trish finds he is grinning at her. 

“What would you like to order?”

The sight of Namor handling money is oddly mundane, but that could just be because Trish is busy debating his potential immortality. She busies herself with sipping at the Sprite the red-cheeked boy behind the counter slides their way while Namor grabs the paper plate, waves away the change the boy offers, and leads them to a bench near the railing to eat. 

“This is not what I expected,” Trish admits, licking a bit of chocolate sauce from her thumb.

“And what did you expect, Ms. Walker?”

“Nothing this normal. Perhaps another fishbowl.”

Behind them, the muted roar of the tide _wooshes_ up to nearly meet the railing. “That could be arranged.” 

“Captain Rogers would be distraught at your manners. Is this how they treated women back in the day?”

A muscle in his cheek flutters, and Trish has to try hard to keep from smiling. When he realizes she’s teasing, the water slides back to its place and he leans a little closer, conspiratorial.

“Would you like to know? How I treat women.”

A little flicker of something hot licks up her spine from behind her navel. 

“It’s starting to seem like you want to show me.”

“Oh? Only starting?”

Slowly, Namor raises his hand and brushes against her lip. “Sugar,” he explains, eyes bright as Trish tracks the movement of his thumb to his mouth as he licks it off. “I’m glad you wore the perfume tonight, by the way.”

Trish swallows thickly. “This is...embarrassing.”

“What is?” He leans back, a little furrow between his eyebrows.

“This cliche stuff.” She waves her hand vaguely, glad for the excuse to put a little more space between them. “Nicholas Sparks shit. I’m not some moony eyed heroine with a tragically fated lover. I refuse.”

“No, your eyes are like sea glass. They are much more beautiful than the moon.”

Before Trish can catch her breath from that off-handed, reflexive kind of earnestness, he continues.

“I will choose another next time. The list had several options. Is there something else you would like to do?”

“...List?”

“I mentioned it had been some time since I ventured above the sea,” Namor shrugs. “Longer since I even entertained the thought of courting one of you. I had to research what was appropriate.”

He slides his phone out of his pocket casually, scrolling through something on the screen there as Trish pieces together what he said. How odd.

“So you googled...date ideas?”

“Of course. Would you prefer a movie next time?”

Trish watches the light of his phone cut angles on his face and shadows in others while her brain catches up to her. 

_Oh my god._

She is not fond, she is not so stupid, this is not — this is ridiculous. This is not endearing. _It’s not, it’s not, it’s not._

“Hey,” her voice sounds far away when she manages to speak, reaching out and putting a hand on his arm. “Uhm. Hey. Do you want to go walk...on the beach? Maybe?”

Namor hums, rising to his feet and extending a hand to help her up. “It would be my pleasure. Let me give you the tour.”

* * *

The problem, it happens, is that the Russian mob works nights.

Well, that is the first problem, the onus to her other current irritations. Chief among _those_ , of which there are several, is that Trish cannot swim.

“ _Namor_!” She shrieks, clawing her way through the thrashing water to the shore where she can get her feet on the ground. How _stupid_ she is to have never fucking learned — how _stupid_ , how _weak_ , after everything, to have to cry for help like this, to have to rely on someone else to save her.

On the shore and pulling up a swathe of the tide to crash down over the men currently raining bullets on the beach, Namor has his back turned to her. If she drowns now, dies in pursuit of her thirst for a bedfellow, she would never be able to live it down. 

While she tries to will a set of fins or gills to appear, the noise around her goes suddenly far off and muffled. The same second, breathing becomes much easier, and for two absolutely disoriented blinks, Trish wonders if she has actually, in fact, willed herself into an Animorph. 

But no — she’s been...been...put in a bubble. She bobs like a beach ball on the churning tide like Alice in Wonderland had in her bottle, watching the carnage on the beach. How many had there been? She counts about fifteen.

Frowning, Trish wonders who the fuck thought to attack the King of Atlantis on the _shore_.

Oh, but her therapist was going to need to make an appointment with _their_ therapist to make it through all of this. 

One by one, Trish watches the ocean swallow each prone body on the shore, each one reappearing after being dunked underwater in a bubble she imagines looks much like her own.

That perhaps implies some things Trish isn’t ready to think about, just yet. Instead, she looks at the lights from the pier reflecting in rippling fractals over their bubbly prisons as a gentle sway underneath her sends her to the shore. Namor’s shoulders are heaving, and his face is set in a snarl that looks feral, eyes sharp still as the bubble bursts around her. She has to crawl on all fours before the seasickness subsides enough for Trish to even think about getting upright, and by that time Namor is crouching down to help her to her feet, anyway.

The saltwater burns her contacts and his outline is blurred further by the night and the boardwalk lights behind him. 

“I confess,” his voice is a little tight, “I thought guiding you towards the water would help provide you some cover, not...that.”

“I can’t swim,” Trish clarifies, unnecessarily. It’s meant to come out sheepish, but she is still a little too breathless to manage. Her throat feels shredded and raw with the salt water she’d choked on while floundering. Namor frowns, and she wonders if this is a dealbreaker she should have considered before going on a date with a man who lives underwater.

“I need to...deal with this,” he says finally. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh. Okay.” Trish pushes some hair behind her ear, grimacing as he fingers get stuck in a knot. _Of course_. 

“Did you drive here?”

“Uh. Yeah.” She reaches for her purse as if to pull out her keys and demonstrate, only to find it not there. 

_Of course_.

Grimacing, perhaps wondering how he wound up here and regretting it, Namor reaches a hand out to the sea, eyes still locked on Trish. At least she is pretty sure, she is having to squint still to see even squiggly kind of outlines. One by one, her belongings float up from the water. Namor crouches down and helps her collect them into her bag after wringing it out. They don’t speak at all until the parking lot is in view.

Trish clears her throat. 

“What will happen to them?”

Namor doesn’t answer right away. “What do you think?”

“Alright. I won’t ask, then.” Nettled, Trish adjusts the strap of her bag before pulling down the hem of her dress, pasted to her legs. “Fine.”

“It’s best if you don’t know for now. It will be taken care of without you.”

_I got thrown in the ocean and nearly died. I think it’s my business. Asshole._

“I said I got it,” she snaps, ducking out of his grip as he tries to reach for her arm.

“If you are not well enough to drive, I could request a cab for you —”

“It’s not a problem.”

Namor scrubs a hand over his face. “If you wouldn’t mind letting me know you made it home.”

“When I get a new phone, I’ll try to remember.” She beelines for her car as soon as it’s in view. “Have a good night.”

He says something in parting, she is sure, but her ears are ringing and the slamming of her car door does not allow her to hear it.


	5. Chapter 5

Trish has had more bad dates than she can remember. It is hardly anything to cry over. That’s life. 

Over and over, she tells herself it is nothing to cry over as she stands under her shower spray, hot as it will go, to wash off the night she’d just had. It doesn’t help. She wipes her face as the tears bubble up, and when she realizes the longer she stands under the spray, the longer she risks getting his attention, she cries a little bit harder.

_Stupid_. Why does it matter? Bad dates happen. It’s hardly the end of the world. Mob hits happen. Superhumans happen. Near-death experiences happen. In her life, it’s hardly earth shattering. 

_This_ one had come out of the blue, but objectively most of these things probably do.

No, Trish forces herself to be honest as she sullenly turns off the faucet. Namor had hurt her feelings.

Her _feelings_.

Ugh. 

As if to mock her, a little salt in the wound, her phone stares at her from a bowl of rice on her kitchen bartop when she makes it out of the bathroom, combing in some leave-in conditioner through her hair with her fingers. Dead as a doornail. Broken. Unmendable.

It’s useless, Trish knows it, but she would rather do something than nothing even if it’s pointless. Perhaps she and Namor were different in that way. 

Next subject. 

Trish all but nosedives into her bed after forcing herself to drink a few glasses of water, knock back some aspirin, and get a handful of her emergency stash of gummy bears in her high-up cabinet. She rubs some lotion from her bedside table on her elbows as her laptop powers on next to her. Retail therapy is in order to replace what was in her purse tonight and then some. 

Feelings have no room in a shopping cart.

* * *

She sleeps in the next morning, glad to have the day off of work. Sure, Trish had complained when she wasn’t selected to do the special program broadcast this week when it was first pitched at the station, but it appears to have been divine intervention. Even after waking, she lazes in bed for almost a half hour before putting her feet on the floor. Though one half of her brain doesn’t want to know, she drags her laptop into the kitchen while she starts on breakfast/lunch to see what the final damage to her card ended up being. Past one thirty the night prior, her memory gets blurry.

Her doorbell rings as she closes the Neiman Marcus tab, a little queasy. Maybe food will have to wait a few minutes. 

The doorbell rings again. Frowning, Trish throws on her robe and half-jogs to the door.

“Sorry, Ms. Walker. It’s a lot, is all.” Two couriers and Abel from the front desk downstairs crowd the hall in front of her door when she glances through the peephole, and when she wrests it open, mouth agape, she finds them laden with three bouquets of flowers, two large shopping bags, and several small boxes.

“What is this?” She asks weakly, a strange weightlessness in her limbs. 

“Gifts, it appears,” Abel says wryly. “Is your table alright?”

“Okay,” Trish stands aside as they bring the items inside. She isn’t sure she manages a proper thank you before locking the door behind them.

Should she have expected this? Had she, privately?

Does she...does she accept? Does she return them? All of it, even The Necklace? How would she even go about it? _Could_ she just throw everything into the ocean?

The bouquets, one almost identical to the first she received at the office, the second the same as the one she’d received at home, and the third...the third, full of rosey pink hydrangea, deep violet hyacinth, and creamy white aster, all have individual cards in them.

Trish collapses on her couch after picking them out, and she closes her eyes and breathes heavily through her nose before telling herself this would be better like a band-aid, quick and sharp.

Card One.

_Ms. Walker,_

_I apologize. Deeply._

Card Two.

_Ms. Walker,_

_I apologize. Deeply._

Card Three.

_Ms. Walker,_

_I apologize. Deeply._

She reaches for the third bouquet, the newest one, fumbling the vase before bringing it into her lap and pressing her nose into it. Trish sneezes immediately after, but she ignores it and breathes in again. It’s nice. Worth it.

The other boxes crowd her vision when she looks up from the flowers. 

Trish gnaws her lip, feeling…. _feelings_.

Ugh.

Box One.

Nestled in red paper, a new tube of the same lipstick she ordered from Sephora last night to replace what had been in her purse, along with two others roughly the same shade.

Box Two.

A supple leather wallet. It’s not identical, but it is about the same size as what she had in her purse the night before. 

Box Three.

A new pair of Weitzman sandals. Trish flips the box over, finding them to be the right size. She can _feel_ the color draining from her face.

Box Four.

A sundress, nearly the same color blue as she wore on the beach. She rubs the poplin hem between her fingers and debates if she should open the last three boxes at all. She wonders if she should call her therapist’s office and request an emergency session.

_In for a penny…_

Box five. 

A Rebecca Minkoff crossbody bag nicer than her own had been.

Box Six.

“ _Goddamn you_ ,” she hisses. The new phone in her hand weighs like lead. Her head aches like it’s being cleaved in two.

After a few minutes of staring at the bounty strewn now on her coffee table and couch, Trish remembers the other box. Frowning, she looks around the gifts and wonders what it could be — what else was there really to replace?

She reaches over.

Box Seven.

Trish’s mouth goes dry. All the color that had been drained from her face shoots right back up, her cheeks burning with it. A matching set of lingerie — silky, seafoam green, trimmed in ivory lace — stares up at her. _Cheeky bastard!_

“God _damn_ you,” she says again, just to say it.

After falling in the water...it had been so dark, but Namor was not human, bound by the constraints of contact lenses. Her dress, if she thinks about it, was not thick. He could probably see everything after pulling her from the tide. Nice of him to point that out _now._

Her palms tingle. She rises to her feet and marches over to the kitchen sink, yanking the faucet on — both taps, when she thinks about it — so hard she thinks they may rip off.

“Hey!” Trish snaps to the water, staring at the way it circles her drain. “What the fuck is this? I’m not — you can’t pay for my _company_ I don’t care what you do under the sea, I’m not a call girl. You were eager to get rid of me last night, so why all this _today_?”

“Trish?”

With a little scream, Trish stumbles back from the sink, only to realize the voice is actually coming from behind her door, which is ringing. 

_Shit_.

“I am not finished with you!” She hisses to the sink before turning the water off. 

_Certifiable_. _Batshit. Absolutely nutty._

“Trish?” The ringing is now accompanied by knocking. When she finally manages to answer, Karen almost bowls her over. Her face is drawn as she wraps her arms around Trish’s shoulders.

“Oh, thank _Christ_. I was about to call Jessica, I’m glad I came here first, something told me to —”

“Is something wrong?”

Blinking owlishly, Karen pulls back to frown at Trish. “You told me if I couldn’t get ahold of you after last night…”

_Shit_. She forgot! She could have sent an email at least explaining her phone was kaput between her shopping binge last night.

As Trish opens her mouth to apologize, though, she follows Karen’s now open mouthed gaze over her shoulder and to the absolute mess strewn in her living room.

“Karen, look —”

“What did he _do_?” She marvels, walking around Trish and leaving her _quite_ behind to poke through Namor’s latest offering.

_Ugh_.

* * *

“He just...sent you back to the car? After all that?”

“Wouldn’t talk to me, either. Prickly. Short. The whole nine yards.” Trish watches Karen rub one of the velvety flower petals between her fingers, chewing the inside of her cheek. “And then all this shit just shows up. Usually it’s not this _much_ , and I could justify it at least a little. But...what does he really think I’m going to do with it?”

“You could plug the phone up to charge,” Karen shrugs innocently. “To start.”

Trish wads up some tissue paper and flings it at her. 

“What about you? Have you heard from Lord Protector?”

“I have…” Karen trails off, grimacing. “And so has Foggy.”

“...How did _that_ go?”

“He had a concentration in Eastern European history in undergrad, apparently. He forgot I was there within two minutes, and I was stuck listening to him picking Victor’s brains about the Cold War for the rest of the afternoon.”

“And _Victor_ just let that happen?”

“I think Victor was trying to impress me,” Karen admits, mumbling and looking down to her lap.

“Oh, you think so? What gives you that impression?”

It is Karen’s turn to glare at her, mouth pursed. Sighing, Trish tries again.

“What are you going to do about it? Do you want him to impress you?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t…” She looks out the window for a long minute. “The last time I tried to — to _relationship_ , it imploded. Some of that was...some of it wasn’t my fault. But some of it was. And he was not Victor Von Doom. He was just a regular...sometimes violent dude.”

“Maybe you don’t have to make a decision right now,” Trish settles on, after flipping through the mental Rolodex of consolation she could offer. “Maybe...you can just enjoy a good feeling when you have it. Maybe you need more information before you make a choice, anyway.”

Humming, Karen leans forward and idly hooks the soft strap of the bra Namor had bought for her on her finger. The light is golden with midafternoon, and shines on the silk and through the fine webbed lace on the cup and band as she holds it aloft. “Are you talking about me, or…?”

Trish huffs as she rises to her feet, yanking the phone box from the coffee table and all but ripping it open, setting it to charge in the kitchen.

* * *

Karen leaves her after another half hour, and Trish settles on nesting with her new items. She lays out the clothes and the lingerie on her bed, however, unable to put them up in her closet. 

Hands on her hips, she reminds herself that this is _her_ house, and Trish can do anything she wants. 

She shucks off her sweatpants and sports bra before sliding the underwear on. Her mouth sets in a grim line. If she ever speaks to him again, Trish thinks she will have to demand answers as to how he learned to size women’s underwear so accurately. She fiddles with the delicate clasp of the bra, and can’t help a little twist in the mirror across from the bed.

It is certainly nicer than what was ruined the night before. And...she chews the inside of her cheek, remembering how he’d said her eyes were like seaglass. If she was leaning into this tomfoolery, Trish would fancy the set was in a similar color to them. 

She pulls the dress over her head to keep from thinking about it. It’s a little tight in the waist and hips, a little large in the bust, but it’s still quite...pretty. She looks good.

_Ugh_.

Her new phone _pings_ in its generic, default tone from the kitchen. Trish feels something behind her sternum like relief, like the shoe she had been waiting for has finally dropped. She pads into the other room barefoot, toying with the fluttery pleats of the skirt’s hem in one hand as she reaches for the phone. It’s a 207 number, and that’s all Trish needs to know.

“I hope you have accepted the phone in order to receive this, or else have managed to fix your other one. I know it is not fair of me to ask, but would it be possible to call on you again?”

Trish, a glutton if there ever was one, knows that there is only one answer she will give, because it is the only way _she_ will get _her_ answers. Still, she waits him out. She looks at the clock on her stove and waits three whole minutes before tapping out a reply.

“You may, if you’re going to actually talk to me. If you aren’t going to be honest, tell me what address I can ship this stuff back to.”

Two seconds pass. Someone knocks on her door.

_There is no fucking way_.

The phone clatters to the counter, and Trish patters to the door on her lightest feet, wondering if it matters.

_Oh, god._

A worn-thin blue t-shirt stretches across the breadth of his chest and shoulders, distracting until she tells herself to get it together. For a second though, the odd sight of him in scuffed denim and dark glasses is pedestrian enough for Trish to question if it was really him.

It is, of course. 

She fumbles the handle a little before pulling it open, and stands uselessly in the doorway for a long, awkward second where she forgets to speak and greet him properly.

“May I come in, or would you prefer to speak in the hall?” He asks finally, voice mild and carefully polite, like he was trying very hard to keep it even.

Namor studies her face before his gaze snatches on her dress. His expression grows private and closed off.

“When you said call on me, I didn’t think this is what you meant.”

“I wanted to clarify things with you personally, as soon as possible.”

“Why?”

Namor looks pointedly over her shoulder into her apartment. After a moment of hesitation, she steps aside for him to enter.

“Should I...should I offer you anything to drink? Are you hungry?”

“Do you want to?” Namor asks, though he is looking at the bouquets in her living room and not at her. “Did you like them, then?”

Trish walks stiffly to her couch, and he follows at a respectable distance. “Did you pick them out yourself?”

He seems surprised by the question as he settles on the other end of her couch. “Who else?”

“You don’t have, like...a mermaid assistant or something?”

Mouth pressed into a thin line, Namor looks pointedly at her dress. “I picked it out. All of it.”

Her cheeks feel hot. She will not be embarrassed in her own home. “I suppose I assumed your _kingly_ duties didn’t leave you much time to peruse the mall.”

“I made time.” His answer is more solemn than she was expecting, and his eyes are much the same. It’s quiet for several long beats before Trish comes out with it.

“What happened? Is it...is it because I can’t swim?”

A ringing, heavy, miserably awkward silence follows. From the corner of her eye, she sees the water in the vase closest to her ripple. 

“What?”

Namor’s voice is so soft Trish thinks she has to see his mouth move to hear it. 

“I mean,” she shrugs, trying for casual, “If it was a dealbreaker since you are...you know. You _live_ there, and you found out that I can’t...I mean. It’s inconvenient for you.”

The water is definitely rippling, swirling around the stems in the vase like a little riptide or whirlpool. 

“No, Ms. Walker. Your inability to swim is a nonissue.” Pinching between his eyebrows briefly, Namor takes a deep breath before speaking. “For risking your life, for — for flinging you into the ocean without enough thought, I apologize.”

“Oh. Oh, uh. That’s not a problem.”

“I disagree.”

“It worked out. This stuff happens. My fr— in my line of work, rather, it happens. I owe you for saving me. I hate having to rely on people for stuff like that anymore.”

“Anymore?” 

Trish doesn’t want to talk about it. “Anyway, I was more pissed at you being an asshole after the fact than getting me wet. All that stuff — it could be replaced. Quickly replaced, apparently,” she tacks on, muttered, before straightening her shoulders and continuing. “But you acted like you couldn’t stand to look at me after, like you couldn’t get away from me fast enough, and you were —”

“I could not look at my _mistake_.”

“Oh, _fuck you_!” She snaps, bristled. “Save me the tragic hero bullshit. I am _not_ a _mistake_!”

“You aren’t,” Namor tries to keep his voice placating, but that only stokes her ire. “But I —”

“But nothing,” Trish hisses. She rises to her feet on impulse, but manages to keep her hands from fisting on her hips. “What do you _want_.”

Growling, he reaches for her wrists and tugs her forward, between his knees. “ _You_. You _know_ it.”

Trish’s jaw snaps closed with a _click_. 

Namor’s eyes are liquid dark and intent roving over her face. “I assumed you would not want to be with me after I wronged you.”

“You should have asked me what I wanted instead of assuming.”

“You are right.” He dips his chin in acknowledgement before adjusting his grip on her wrists. It feels like he is touching her more like this, somehow. “What do you want?”

His gaze dips down from her face to her neck, the flat of her chest — her dress, too big on top, gaping a little for him to see a peek of the bra beneath. 

“I want…” _I want you not to see how hard I am breathing. I want you to keep looking. I want you to see_. “I want you to remember my size correctly next time you want to apologize to me.”

Slowly, Namor rises to his feet, brushing against her as much as possible in the process. She tilts her head up to look at him when he’s fully upright, unsure if she has a coherent thought the entire time.

Trish watches his hand come up to cup her cheek, fingers tracing the line of her jaw, like it is happening to someone else. 

“Is there anything else you want, Ms. Walker?”

“Do they look how you hoped they would?” Her voice is a little strangled, a little breathy, a little embarrassing. She wonders if it matters now. “I was ready to be mad at you for a long time, you know.”

“I know.” The hand on her face trails down the side of her throat, featherlight. His fingers trace the neckline of her top, barely pushing it to the side off of her shoulder. Namor looks at the strap of her bra, the lace visible in the cup, and breathes in, slow and even.

He doesn’t say anything, and he doesn’t touch her any more, either.

“Well?” She finally prompts, throat thick.

“If I may be so bold, I believe I’ll need to take a closer look to be certain.”

“The last superhero I dated had x-ray vision, he could have told me without this fuss,” Trish tries to smile, but it lands a little flat, and it doesn’t sound like a joke the way she intended.

“I’m not a superhero,” Namor rasps, and his eyes are dark and serious as he leans down and kisses her.

_!!!_

Sweet _Christ_. 

Trish surges up to her toes to meet him, tilting her head back and content to let him work for it as she wraps her arms around his neck, his free hand settling heavily at her waist. He kisses her with an unhurried thoroughness that leaves her gasping — quite literally, as she presses against his chest to pull back when she realizes he does not seem to require oxygen at the same rate as she does.

“Sorry,” she pants. “Just needed to breathe. Go on. Another.”

She tilts her head back, eyes fluttering closed again and ready to hold her breath a little longer now that she knows to prepare for it. Namor laughs, a warm, smooth sound that she feels through his chest like water tumbling up to the shore, even as the tide. 

His lips don’t find her mouth again, however, settling instead near the shell of her ear as he works down her jaw. Trish’s eyes roll back in her head. 

The hand on her waist wraps around, squeezing her ass as his other fists in her hair. Trish giggles, breathless, and it seems to break him out of some trance. Pulling away, Namor takes several deep breaths before speaking again.

He opens his mouth to speak, but Trish beats him to it.

“If you are going to say anything to me other than ‘I will now carry you to the bedroom to continue,’ I do _not_ want to hear it.”

Namor appears to consider this. Reaching down, he grabs her by the backs of her thighs and hoists her up. “Unfortunately, I would never say such a thing.”

Trish wraps her legs around his waist as he walks towards the bedroom. “Oh?”

“I suppose it would be more like…” Namor leans to murmur in her ear. “I’m going to show you every way I’ve dreamt of bedding you.”

They clear the living room, nearly to the bedroom door, and he continues. “I’m going to give you a reason to want to learn to swim.”

Trish laughs, breathless, as her back meets her mattress, and then his weight over her is delicious, warm, and close. “I am going to _ruin_ you for other men.”

Sweet _Christ_!

Arching up, Trish lets out a thin keen. Namor gives her no quarter, pressing her down into the bed as she grinds on his thigh, his knee pressed between her legs and his hands buried in her hair, leaving her neck exposed for him to ravage before making his way up to her ear again. 

“Tell me,” he rumbles, “what you think of when you think of me. I’ll consider giving it to you.” 

From the corner of her eye, she sees him smirking. Her hips slow before they still. She was a cool girl, and she had some cards here. This was her house, goddammit.

“Jemaine Clement,” Trish shrugs, trying very hard to keep her face smooth and sincere. 

It appears as if Atlantis has phones and Google, but no Disney+, therefore no point of _Moana_ reference.

“What other man,” Namor’s voice is silky, edged with something hungry that Trish feels hum under her skin, “could you be thinking of, when in bed with me?”

“He’s not a man exactly.” Trish stretches almost lazily underneath him like a spoiled house cat. Namor frowns at her as if she is a puzzle missing a piece. She reaches up and touches the furrow between his brow. “He’s a crab. He sings this great little ditty — but it’s the CGI that’s what gets me. It really got cheated out of the Golden Globe.”

A beat, and Namor’s eyes flash with something. “ _Wench_!”

Cackling, Trish lets out a small squeal when he flips her over, tugging her hips up. 

“You think to play games with King Namor?” His own voice shakes a little with restrained laughter, and Trish arches her hips back into his grip. 

“Oh? Do you think this is a game?”

The weight at her back comes closer. He pulls her hair over one shoulder. “Never.”

Then he is reaching around to undo the tie at the waist of her wrap dress, only to growl in frustration when he realizes it’s just for looks and not functional. Trish snickers, until she hears the fabric rip behind her.

“ _You can’t be serious —_ ”

“I will buy you another.” Namor slides the ruined halves of her dress down her arms, and briefly Trish feels the _delight_ of his jeans pressed perfectly against the slickness of her underwear.

“Ten more, a hundred,” he murmurs between wet, open mouthed kisses from the nape of her neck down the length of her spine. 

When he reaches the waistband at her underwear, he hesitates before nipping the curve of her ass through the fabric. Trish swats at him, squawking, and feels him chuckling low in his chest as he turns her over.

“Let me look at you,” he murmurs. His hands are warm and rough rubbing a loose, slow circuit on her thighs as he drinks the sight of her in. Trish would be a liar to not admit preening a bit under the attention. 

“What color will you pick next time?”

“Next time?” Namor raises his eyebrow, pressing a kiss to her sternum, followed with the scrape of his teeth.

“I don’t think this is the only apology you will ever owe me.” Though she tries for blasé, her voice is breathy and high.

Namor hums, and it drills down deliciously to her skin as he tugs one cup of the bra down. “ _This_ color, I think, looks exquisite on you.” Then his mouth is on her nipple, and speaking becomes unimportant.

Her bra is flung in the corner of the room before her panties hastily follow. When she is bared to him though, she can’t help but squirm a little. 

“Clothes,” she pants, reaching for his shirt. He beats her to it, grabbing the collar of his shirt and pulling it up over his head. When his hands make it to the zipper on his jeans, Trish feels a little lightheaded. 

“Spread your legs.”

Trish glances down to where he is nestled between them already, frowning. What—?

Namor cups her jaw, forcing her to look at him. “Wider, little pearl.” Then he winks at her before sliding down the bed, and Trish scrambles to open her legs enough to accommodate the breadth of his shoulders. 

He delves into her with the same unhurried thoroughness that he kissed her with, like he has all the time in the world to tease her open. His mouth works her into a steady kind of frenzy, one that feels like it leads to an inevitable conclusion. The surety in that anticipation encourages her to be more patient than normal as he takes fistfulls of her hips to hold her down against him, and she settles in to...ride it out.

She feels a hysterical little giggle claw up her throat, and he seems to take that as a sign to double his efforts.

_Maybe I will learn to swim_.

Trish feels Namor laugh, pressing a kiss that is mostly teeth to the inside of her thigh, and she realizes she’s been babbling out loud. Ah, hell. _Embarrassing_ , but her orgasm drowns out the rest of her self-beratement. 

Namor groans as he rises, kissing his way up her body. “How shall I have you?”

Trish hesitates, only partly to regain her mental faculties. Her favorite was usually from behind, but…

“Like this is fine. I want to see you.”

Seemingly delighted with her answer, Namor kisses her while getting lined up, and —

“Shit,” he grumbles.

“Oh no you don’t.” Trish claws her fingers into his shoulders when she feels him start to pull away.

“Contraception,” Namor grinds out. “I don’t — I didn’t expect…”

“I have an IUD. I don’t know if it protects me from mercury poisoning, though.”

“Impossible wench,” he clucks, sounding quite fond, before tapping at the outside of her legs. “Knees up.” 

Slowly, he pushes into her, and Trish kind of regrets not being able to hide her face into a pillow as she throws her head back. Namor pushes against her knees for better leverage until he bottoms out, then stills.

“I feel like you’re trying to be a gentleman now,” she pants, “but I will kill you if you don’t move.”

“Is that how you would like it?” He muses, but his voice is tight.

Trish squeezes down on him. “ _Yes_.”

She loses track of time as he rocks into her, slowly at first no matter how she pleads him to hurry, faster, harder, _more_ —

It feels like he is smiling when he kisses her, then he is pushing one of her legs up, higher, taut, and driving into her with fervor. 

_Finally, yes._

Namor buries his face into the side of her neck, and she delights in the murmuring she feels against her skin as he tells her how she feels, how sweet she tastes, how perfect, perfect, _good_ she is before it garbles into gibberish. 

He tilts her hips up, pulling her off of the bed and holding her there until little stars start to pop behind her eyelids, and she is _close_. Trish feels him shudder inside of her, and it is enough for her to follow. _Worth it. Worth it. Worth it._

They are quiet, tangled together in her bed as the light streams in from the window and their breath catches up with them. He toys with her hair absently, and she rolls over to smoosh her face in his chest when she feels like her body is her own to manage again.

“Are you alright, Ms. Walker?” He murmurs, abandoning her hair to stroke the line of her spine. “Did I hurt you?”

Trish wriggles her arm around him more fully. When he relaxes a bit underneath her, she leans over and bites his nipple, just because. She is immediately rewarded by him hissing and batting her off.

“I think,” she grins, looking up to study the lines of his face, the blown out pupils, the flush still on his cheeks and chest, “under the circumstances, you can call me Trish. For now.”


	6. Chapter 6

“I hate the beach.”

“I encourage you to abandon this perspective,” Namor grins, sliding his dark sunglasses up his nose. “For practicality, if nothing else.”

Mouth pursed, Trish looks out to the shore. 

“I still haven’t learned —”

“Oh? It’s been three months since you agreed,” Namor tugs her closer, an arm hooked around her back.

“I signed up for lessons with Karen! I did!” Trish protests. “But the AIM Bots ruined the pool and the whole damn gym when they had that last tiff with Stark, that whole block of town is still not reopened, and she’s out of the country now anyway —”

Namor pinches her bottom, and Trish swats at him, scowling.

“That does not get you out of your promise.”

“But —”

“You gave me your word, Ms. Walker,” he tells her solemnly, “when last I left, to journey with me next time. To try.”

He runs his hand along the swell of her hip, over the skirt he’d sent her last week while away. Trish narrows her eyes to slits. Playing dirty, was he?

“Not too far, Namor.”

“Not too far,” he promises, taking her by the hand. The beach he’d taken them to is quiet and empty, and as the tide parts like the Red Sea in front of them, she is grateful to avoid further spectacle. Namor walks them into the ocean, occasionally pointing out fish or algae or coral on either side of them as they go. 

Begrudgingly, Trish thinks some of it is nice. 

They walk for maybe forty-five minutes in mostly companionable silence, the texture of the sand underfoot changing slowly, the colors of the water growing richer, the man at her side relaxing each step further in a way he could not be above sea. Tucked under his arm, Trish revels in the weight and warmth of him so close. She missed it more than usual when he was gone this last time. That’s a dangerous thought to entertain, still. Trish tries to redirect it.

“You know,” she murmurs, “they had this part in _Moana_ , too.”

Namor’s footsteps falter briefly before he recovers.

“On your left,” he growls in her ear, “you’ll see the goblin shark. They usually stay in deeper water but I thought it may _interest_ you. Something you haven't seen with _Mr. Clement._ ”

Trish freezes, looking at the odd outline floating towards the wall of water beside her. _Surely not_.

But it _is_ , and she tries to hold her ground and not look frightened, but it comes so close that Trish can see its beady eyes, and then one of its fins breaches the barrier, and all bets are off.

Namor roars with laughter behind her as she turns heel and starts the dash back to shore, but Trish hardly spares him more than a middle finger over her shoulder.

“ _Nope, nope, nope._ ”

Not for all the dick in the world. 

**Author's Note:**

> Listen...did I have other things to work on? Yes. And yet. 
> 
> I finished the last draft of my novel and while it is being beta-read, I wanted to write something a little more fun. This is the closest to real crack I have written in a long time. Canon characterization? I don't know her. This is as near to romance novel stuff I may ever go -- unrealistic, objectively unhealthy relationships framed to be swoonworthy? Improbable problems and resolutions? Y-E-S. In the sphere of fiction, all things are possible and acceptable. We stan.
> 
> I had so much fun window shopping for Trish's rich-girl taste and Namor's kingly budget. I am toying with a companion piece about Karen and Victor Von Doom...eventually. He also has a relatively unlimited budget, so when the Neiman Marcus itch hits me next, I will try to use it as a vessel instead of actually shopping with my own money ;) 
> 
> Thanks for reading! I hope you have been well :) Feedback is always appreciated!!


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